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Kurdistan

Turkey’s incursion and bombing campaign in Kurdish controlled area of Afrin is a worrying escalation in a prolonged stand-off on the Syrian border.

Erdogan’s hostility to the expanding territory now under the control of Kurdish forces has been held back by the support of both Russia and the US for the Kurdish forces. But as relations have thawed between Turkey and Russia, the dynamic has changed.

Muhsin Kareem from the Worker Communist Party of Kurdistan spoke to Solidarity about the situation in Kirkuk.

What has happened since the Iraqi army came into Kirkuk on 16 October?

The situation right now in Kirkuk is not one of a complete occupation; the city is look like to operate normally. But despite of Hashd Al- Sha’abi is now not in Kirkuk itself and deployed in outskirts, but the people are very worried and many have left especially the Kurds.

Over 100,000 Kurds have fled Kirkuk since the Iraqi army and the Hash’d al-Shaabi militia seized control of the territory, in the face of an overwhelming vote for an independent Kurdistan.

Kirkuk is of great importance for both Kurds and the Iraqi government. Its oilfields would have made any potential Kurdish state economically viable and allow it to quickly establish international trade links. Few oilfields now remain in the hands of the Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

Iraqi government forces and Shia militias have occupied Kirkuk for the first time since 2014, the year Daesh made their away across Iraq. Although Kirkuk is not part of Iraqi Kurdistan it has been under the control of Kurdish forces. In the September referendum it voted by a sizeable majority in favour of independence.

Mehmet Aksoy, a London-based Kurdish socialist activist, has been killed by Daesh while volunteering with the Kurdish YPG national liberation forces. Aksoy, a trained film-maker, was volunteering as a press officer with a unit of the YPG when a Daesh unit attacked his position a short distance from the front line in Raqqa.

On 25 September, 3.5 million people (97.7%) voted for independence for Iraqi Kurdistan. Aso Kamal of the Worker-Communist Party of Kurdistan and a Coordinator for the Centre for independence of Kurdistan spoke to Solidarity.

We have been campaigning for a referendum since 1999.

We have had conferences in Kurdistan and across Europe, Canada and Australia and we have lobbied for support for a referendum. The issue has come to the fore since federalism has been in collapse across Iraq since the rise of Daesh.

After several months of deadlock, the US-led operation with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to take Raqqa has begun. Lama Fakih the Middle East director at Human Rights rightly points out, “The battle for Raqqa is not just about defeating ISIS, but also about protecting and assisting the civilians who have suffered under ISIS rule for three and a half years.”

On Sunday 16 April, Turkey’s voters will cast ballots in a referendum. They will decide on proposals from the ruling Islamists, the Justice and Development (AK) party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The main thrust of the 18 constitutional amendments that will be voted on as a package is to highly centralise power in the hands of the President. If Erdoğan wins he will also be able to run in Presidential elections in 2019 and 2024, meaning he could be in power until 2029.

During the US election Trump’s advice to Obama was, “do not attack Syria... if you do many very bad things will happen and from that fight the US gets nothing.” Therefore Trump was not heeding his own advice when he gave the go-ahead for 59 missiles to be fired at an Assad military airfield on 6 April.